Chamber Music for string instruments

Chamber Music for string instruments

The conquest of the Mediterranean introduced a spectacular array of precious materials, flora, and fauna into Rome, and wealthy homeowners spared no expense in collecting and displaying exotica and virtuoso feats of artistry, many accomplished by captive Greeks. The seminar explores patterns of consumption in houses, villas, and sanctuaries in the late Republic and early Empire, and how they were sustained by slave labor, political affiliations, and land ownership.

Buried in the volcanic eruption of 79 CE, Pompeii provides an astounding level of preservation for fresco, sculpture, and luxury arts in addition to temples, baths, houses, shops, theaters, and streets. The rediscovery of the ancient site since the eighteenth century had a significant impact upon European art and literature. The course examines the surviving environment and artifacts created in the late republic and early empire and considers the history of archaeological and art historical methods and the romantic visions of Pompeii in art, theatre, and film up to the present.

This course traces the different paths of painting, sculpture, and photography since World War II. We will follow the 'crisis of modernism,' the rise of post-modernism, the turn to identity politics, and recent artistic interests in globalization, transnationalism, and diaspora. Among the major figures to be studied are Boltanski, Chicago, Christo, Johns, Kiefer, Mapplethorpe, Rauschenberg, and Warhol.

This course examines the great ruptures in European art that today we call modernist. It relates aspects of that art to the equally great transformations in European society: revolutionary ferment, the rise and consolidation of industrial capitalism, colonization and its discontents, and world war. It will branch out to compare different kinds of modernisms, including those in Mexico and Russia. Among the major figures to be studied are Duchamp, Matisse, Malevich, Picasso, Rivera, Seurat, and van Gogh.

This survey outlines the arts in Italy from the late thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, a time of major cultural transformation. To trace these developments, we will take a geographic approach, focusing on cities and societies in order to understand the diverse social networks that linked artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo with their publics.

A historical survey of medieval architecture, monumental sculpture, and painting of France, England, Germany, and Italy. The course concentrates on the great church as a multimedia environment and on the religious, political and social roles of art in society.

Some of the best feature-length films of the past century have commanded our attention and imagination because of their compelling artistry and the imaginative ways they tell stories visually and verbally. This course closely studies narrative films from around the world, from the silent era to the present, and in the process it introduces students to the basic elements of film form, style, and narration.

An introduction to painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe and America from the Renaissance to the present. Classes are organized around five focused topics: Renaissance Florence; the artist in the seventeenth century; art and revolution; nineteenth-century abstraction. Lectures will be complimented by class discussion and short films.